It’s rare when the Mets are on the positive side of a laugher. They got good pitching, timely hits, and the Phillies just looked terrible on the other side.

Carlos Torres put together his best performance as a Met today. He has struggled this year as a starter and hadn’t started in a month before today, and so I was skeptical about what he would give the Mets today. But he kept his pitch count down, his location was down in the zone and he had a great slider working for him today. He’s had an opportunity here to show he can play a role for the Mets next season – be it as a reliever or a guy who can give them some spot starts – and he has taken advantage of his time since he was brought up.

Anthony Recker’s batting average certainly isn’t pretty, but he seems to come up big in most of the opportunities he has been given. He has a lot of extra-base hits in limited opportunities, and his home run today gave the Mets some breathing room, something they don’t normally have.

Yes, this has now become a time for evaluation with the Mets. Terry is using a lot of weird lineups, a lot of weird configurations, and he is trying to see what his fragmented roster has in it in the season’s final month. While these evaluations have significance for the future of the club, winning and playing well are important too, and it was good to see some energy in this club today. If anything, they haven’t quit as a unit and will at least provide a maximum effort while learning and being evaluated over final 30 games of the season.

W.B. Mason Post Game Extra

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The Mets open a nine-game road trip with a three-game series against the Nationals tomorrow night at Nationals Park, with Dillon Gee facing Jordan Zimmermann at 7:05 PM.